The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Well it's not like we're not trying to invent better batteries, but it's hard to do. Doubling capacity would already be huge, several orders of magnitude would make you a billionaire.

I don't see it happening anytime soon. Furthermore, Lithium can be a strategic resources (e.g. half the world's supply is in bolivia) which could mean a significant bottleneck if we start using them on a large scale for a flexible energy network.

A regular house roof is enough to be mostly neutral. Significant strides are made in the energy efficiency of a house. Better management of energy flows can result in city heating from industrial waste heat, reducing the energy requirements further.

I agree with both sides of the discussion on this so far, I just absolutely wanted to drop in here my little tid-bit of history that noone knows about on this forum except me and that will blow everyone's mind.

Durring the Tchernobyl (that's how we write it in france) incident, the french government decided to.... I don't even know if ya'll are gonna be willing to believe this .... lie to the french people and concocted a story about the fallout cloud...... are you ready for this.... STOPPING more or less at the french frontier. And they had the entire media working with them.

I know ... ludicrous.

THIS is what they had peope believe :





Including but not limited to... an imaginary anticyclone :

Here a later article finally admitting to the nuclear cloud actually having covered the entirety of France BUT WAIT, it's absolutely harmless!




While in truth :



People in spain and germany were both staying indoors, clogging their windowsils and doors with wet rags and distributing gas masks and whatever other gear they could find. The state of urgency was at it's max. Meanwhile people in france were out picknicking (not an exagerration. they litteraly were enjoying the sunny april) because, you guessed it, they trusted their government.

Before long people stopped thinking the spanish had fallen on their heads and started comming round to reason. but the damage was done. We're still dealing with the genetic consequences of this idiotic choice by our government today.

EDIT : And I've just learned this from wikipedia but it's still our government's official standpoint that there have been no health consequences due to tchernobyl in france.

there I spilled my bit of trivia.

Interesting history tatsujb.

When it comes to discussing nuclear, its evident how much energy it produces and its ability to replace fossil fuels entirely. There is no doubt that alternative energy sources cant replace all the energy produced by fossil fuels.

However, The logic behind nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels because its safer isnt valid reasoning though because its missing the point. Attacking the fuel source is irrelevant. The issue is the chemical reaction known as combustion.

The reason why fossil fuels have the perception that they do is the other stuff mixed in with the CO2. Two clarify this point, I will provide a few examples.

-The first example is lead in gasoline. During the 1970s, companies like mobil started adding lead to their gasoline to provide a performance boost. After going through combustion, small particles of lead would shoot out into the atmosphere that would poison the air. (They would also ruining the catalytic converter, which is another point!)

-The production of NO2 within an internal combustion engine. nitric acid formed from NO2 in the atmosphere. Cars today abandoned the carburetor because the catalytic converter used to convert NO2 had to have everything in the cylinder combust. Since gasoline is a mixture of various different chemicals, fuel injection systems were installed to provide the leanest conditions possible (lean meaning more air to fuel. Fat means more fuel to air) in order for the catalytic converter to be the most efficient.

-mercury and sulfur compounds in Coal: Coal itself is "dirty" because it contains trace amounts of mercury and sulfur compounds so when it gets injected into the atmosphere, the environment gets polluted. Carbonic acid causes acid rain, but sulfuric acid is worse.


Even today new engines are so efficient that the exhaust now ejects carcinogenic suspended particulate matter (SPM). The hot exhaust injects ultra fine particulates into the air that nothing can agglomerate with until its suspended in the atmosphere for a period of time. A good analogy of this concept would be thinking of plasma. Plasma requires a large amount of energy to separate all the subatomic particles from one another. It will naturally return to some atom after the energy is removed. Like plasma, hot exhaust from an engine will agglomerate together in the atmosphere once the air cools.

This is what is killing people though..... If you ride a bicycle in the city and you are riding next to an engine, this is what your inhaling. The human body isnt designed for particulates of this size, hence death. Can humans provide a better way to agglomerate the SPM faster to make it more safer for the atmosphere? That is the question when it comes to combustion....


During this whole argument, I didnt really mention CO2 as the main issue. I am not denying its significance though. I wanted to point out that many of the negative aspects of fossil fuels are misidentified. Many of these problems can be solved. This doesn't make fossil fuels "extinct" by any stretch. What this indicates is that certain fossil fuels need to be removed while others expanded upon. Personally, I believe coal falls into the former category. Methane and its liquid counterpart are the latter

Fossil fuels are as clean as nuclear energy.

so basicaly we have to wait until one of the newer plants gets a meltdown ...

also I know the topic has moved on now but on the topic of global warming this should make things poignantly clear.

Lol

Read yet another article today where the scientists basically said the following:

"So, we know there hasn't been any statistically significant change in temperature from 1998 to 2012. Dont worry: global warming is still happening. We swear."
Any other field and they'd be laughed out of the room.

You're the only one being laughed out of any metaphorical room here.

Wikipedia lists the how much radioactive material was dispersed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Effects
Sorry to rain on your "all government is evil/incompetent" parade but France would have had no major issues directly related to the incident. Fyi Caesium has a decay rate of ~30 yrs and decays into a less radioactive element. Also the "counter measures" mentioned taken by Germans and Spanish (also that subtle Spanish racism ) won't even stop the radiation and gas masks will only stop inhalation of radioactive particles. There was no effective counter available to the public other than living in a lead lined house, I have also doubts radiation suits would work.

Tl;dr in France it would be probably slightly more uv you'd get outside on a bad day.

I think you underestimate the timescales some fields work on.

"Before long people stopped thinking the spanish had fallen on their heads and started comming round to reason."

Subtle racism?

A counter which is still used to this day is to not eat certain animals or vegetables in Europe.

The media tends to portray the Spanish as lazy and stupid probably me being oversensitive.

?

Please explain this sentence and why is it racist?
"Before long people stopped thinking the spanish had fallen on their heads and started comming round to reason."

Back to the energy subtopic:
Most governments are greedy people chosen by stupids.
Nuclear power(fission) means a great risk for many years.
Lots of things can happen in 40 or 60 years(or millions for the waste): poverty, war, terrorism. In all those situations having nuclear plants around is really dangerous. So better not taking the risk

I was saying that not eating berries, mushrooms or animals such as the wild boar which eat these is an "effective counter available to the public other than living in a lead lined house", which is still advised to this day.

Dont think he was calling Spain stupid at all, nor is stupidity something I hear associated with Spain.-lazy yes. Looks to me like he was saying "smart move Spain" if anything.

Just me being stupid it seems.

Nuclear power is safe if well managed, but human error and greed can make it quite dangerous. A major issue though is most reactor built in the 80s-90s should be decommissioned and rebuilt as they have reached the end of their life expectancy and have an increasing risk now to society. Newer type 4 reactor do take into account terrorist and military attacks.
We need natural selection back to deal with idiots.

The problem is when they select themselves out by blowing up a nuclear plant with them

We Spaniards are poor, we don't close 80's or 90's reactors we reopen 70's.

But some of the engineers who work there have brains, not every employee is a Homer Simpson.

And us Americans to fearful due to false reports, studies, and information from the US media.

Aircraft crash. There's a high risk of death and destruction. But when an aircraft crashes we thoroughly investigate what happened, and either change the design or change the rules to fix it. As a result, aviation is one of the safest forms of travel.

If we can do that, why is it that when it comes to nuclear energy, we suddenly expect the idiocy of Chernobyl everywhere?

An air plane crash mainly risks the live of the people onboard. At least I can't remember many plane crashes of the last few years that hit a lot of people on the ground. So the victims took a risk and lost the gamble. With nuclear plants however the whole community that lives in the area around has to take the risk. And if they lose the gamble they all lose their homes for decades.

Sure but if Homer Simpson blows up a nuclear plant he'll not only remove himself from the evolutionary process, but some of his more intelligent colleagues as well. Really just joking

towards the french??

yeah potentially but actually it's just a characterisation of what the french where in this situation; blind sheep.

If you meant the spanish than you probably missed a paragraph or two: in that sentence I was saying the french were realizing that it was they, not the spanish that had been wrong about the whole "is there radiation from tchernobyl beyond the french border" debate, all along.

"stopped" being the word that inoculated the negativve into that sentence. If I had added "not" that would have been a double negative.

WHAT?

yeah, more like.